


the long road to wisdom (i'll walk with you)

by lovebeyondmeasure



Series: her heart like the ocean, his heart like the sun [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Eventual Katara/Zuko (Avatar), F/M, Friends to Lovers, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Social Justice Katara, Well more like Friends to Maybe-More-Than-Friends-Oh-God-What-Are-Feelings, Zuko is learning to Fire Lord
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 03:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12160431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: Inviting Katara on his tour of the kingdom was, without a doubt, one of Zuko’s best ideas. She answered endless questions about the Avatar, gave inspiring speeches off the cuff, and made a wonderful show of inter-kingdom unity.“Gives me something useful to do while Aang’s off on his meditation quest thing, too,” she’d said when he’d asked. Her smile had made him flush uncomfortably and he’d stumbled over his reply.—————Zuko and Katara, on the road again. Mainly from Zuko's perspective.A prequel of sorts toand in the moonlight (i'll give you the pieces of my heart)





	1. motherless hearts and how they beat

**Author's Note:**

> Here they are, my two most precious children. Updates sporadically, more often if people are asking for it. If it's not marked complete, it's not abandoned; the muse for this one is fickle, that's all. If you have prompts or suggestions, find me anytime @ lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com

Inviting Katara on his tour of the kingdom was, without a doubt, one of Zuko’s best ideas. She answered endless questions about the Avatar, gave inspiring speeches off the cuff, and made a wonderful show of inter-kingdom unity.

“Gives me something useful to do while Aang’s off on his meditation quest thing, too,” she’d said when he’d asked. Her smile had made him flush uncomfortably and he’d stumbled over his reply. 

And watching her walk among his people was awe-inspiring. The way she immediately asked people’s names, learned their stories, cared about them. Her love for his people, the people who’d hurt and hunted her, made him feel.... slightly inadequate, actually. Her unflinching forgiveness, in the face of everything she’d gone through, made his own grudges feel petty.

Having Katara around made him better. The questions she asked forced him to look past the surfaces of the situations they came across. 

————— 

“Whose children are these?” she asked one harried-looking mother. “There are so many here, they can’t all be yours!”

“I take care of most of the village children while their parents work, Princess. It’s my contribution,” the woman said, stretching a hand out to stop a toddler who was barreling for the front door and freedom.

“Please, call me Katara,” she said, swinging up the child and bouncing him on her hip, to his delight. “How many of them are yours?”

Zuko hadn’t been interested in the house full of shrieking kids, and was distractedly reading a missive, but the woman’s reply caught his attention.

“Oh, two are mine, but I’ve ended up with of most of our orphans, too. So perhaps seven? No, eight of them now.”

“This village has six orphans?” he asked. “But it’s so small!”

In fact, they’d just paused there to eat lunch. It hadn’t been a real stop on the tour; it was barely a spot on the map.

“Y-yes, Fire Lord!” she stammered. “Most have parents who were in the army, but two lost parents to the factory down the mountain.”

“The factory?”

“Yes, the airship factory. Most of the villagers who aren’t farming work there. Although it may close down, now that the army doesn’t need so many airships. Lee Chen, stop that!” She dashed off to grab a small boy who was reaching for the handle of a pot on the stove.

Katara set the boy she’d been holding down, gently nudging him back inside.

“I had no idea,” he said, in a daze. 

“Well, you’re in charge of the economy now,” she said practically as they walked away from the house. “You’ll have to come up with something to keep things going now that your country’s out of the war business.”

She laughed at his wide-eyed look. “Or deputize someone to look into it! Isn’t that what all your flocks of ministers are for?”

He nodded, relieved. She continued, “I think you should have someone look into the children, too. That many orphans in a village this small means there’s probably lots of kids wandering around without someone taking proper care of them. Someone ought to help them.”

Zuko was awed by the fierceness of her tone. “Of course,” he said, catching her arm. “Of course I will.”

She nodded firmly. “Good.” 

He could practically see her brain turning over the information she’d just heard. They walked in silence back to the command tent, where the rest of the party was preparing to depart.

“Aren’t we visiting the airship factory tomorrow?” Katara asked suddenly. 

Zuko turned to look at her. One of the team in charge of coordinating the tour scrambled to answer. 

“Yes, Princess Katara. The airship factory is on the schedule for day after tomorrow. It is a major supplier for the army.”

She nodded her thanks, and muttered so only Zuko could hear her, “I am not a princess, dammit.” 

“Why?” Zuko asked. “I didn’t think you cared about airships.”

She gave him a look that made him feel like a fool for asking. “The woman said that two of the orphans lost their parents to the factory,” she replied. “Makes me wonder what the factory is like, that so many people have died. And she was matter-of-fact about it, too, like it wasn’t a big tragedy, just something that happened.”

Zuko was following her thoughts now, and mad at himself he hadn’t caught it sooner. 

“You think there’s something wrong with the factory.”

She nodded. “The factory, or the people running it. There shouldn’t be orphans from simple factory work. I want to know what’s going on.”

Zuko, once again, felt an ache for the way Katara made cause of these people’s lives, his people’s lives. She had talked to one person, and immediately found problems that needed fixing, and then decided to find ways to solve them.

—————

“How do you do it?” Zuko asked her one night over dinner. It was just the two of them in his pavilion, pitched in the blessedly quiet woods after nearly a week in a major city with too many people, too many demands. Zuko had missed the peacefulness of these nights.

“Do what?” Katara asked, finishing off a dumpling.

“Care so much,” Zuko said. “I’ve never seen anyone care about people like you. And these aren’t even your people! You have every reason to let the Fire Nation suffer, but instead you’re here, like, kissing babies and healing people.”

She looked at him blankly. He went on.

“I don’t even know why you’re here, I thought you’d be back with your own people, you know? But you’re here in the Fire Nation with me, wandering around, touring boring buildings and giving speeches!”

She had begun to smile now.

“How do you even give speeches like that without preparing for them?” He finished in a voice laden with both wonder and jealousy. 

She laughed. “I don’t know! I just do. Remember that terrible play we saw on Ember Island, where I was supposedly all full of hope and feelings all the time?”

Zuko winced at the memory of that terrible play, and felt his cheeks warm when he remembered that he and Katara had supposedly shared a romance. It was a little too close for what might, possibly, be growing between them. But Katara was still speaking, moving right past it.

“I just tell people how I feel,” she concluded. “I’m just honest. And as for why I’m here?” She sighed. “I guess I should be back at the Pole. But now that we’ve reestablished contact with the Northern tribe, and Dad’s home, no one wants to listen to me anymore. Like, yeah, they listen to what I say, but they don’t respect me yet.” 

She leaned back. “Your people call me princess, which isn’t quite right. I’m the chief's daughter, and a bender, and a hero, but in a lot of ways I’m still just a girl to a lot of them. Like, they didn’t actually see me being a hero, you know? So they might know that they should respect me, but that doesn’t actually translate into real respect.” She scowled. “I love my people, but some of our traditions leave a lot to be desired. Anyway,” she shrugged. “I’m letting Sokka have the joy of rebuilding. I was planning on traveling more with Aang, but he’s on some kind of Avatar vision quest, he couldn’t give me a lot of details about it. So I was a little bit at loose ends. And you offered me something to do. Something meaningful.”

The look she gave him was warm and grateful. “Honestly, Zuko, it means a lot to me that you want my advice. I know we, uh. Haven’t always got along, so it’s really nice to be able to help you now.”

“Well, you’re always welcome with me,” Zuko said, hoping his face wasn’t flushed. “I mean, you know, in the Fire Nation. You’ve been a really big help on this trip. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

She gave him an arch look. “You probably would have collapsed under the weight of all your Fire Lord regalia,” she said. “You fire nation people wear far too much gold.”

As the conversation moved on, Zuko couldn’t help but glance at Katara out of the corner of his good eye. The way she laughed, the way she gestured, the way she teased him; he stored all this away against the time she would, eventually, leave.


	2. the heart of a nation is its people, pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tour of the Fire Nation continues, bringing Zuko and Katara to Fire Fountain City. They begin a journey that will lead them both to unexpected places. Also, there's a lot of bowing. Like, maybe too much bowing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may remember [Fire Fountain City](http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Fire_Fountain_City) from the episode "The Runaway." I'll be taking my own liberties with it.
> 
> There's not a lot of the two of them together in the chapter; it's a continuation of the last chapter's setup about the orphans and factories. That plot will continue to develop, as will Zuko and Katara, both together and individually. Also, I want to make it clear that it's been a few years since the end of the series, so the characters have aged a couple of years. 
> 
> This is entirely un-beta'd, so if you catch anything, please let me know! Thank you, as ever, for reading.

Traveling from one island to the next was far easier with Katara with them. She could smooth the seas, allowing for a fast sail; and Zuko couldn’t tear his eyes away from the joy on Katara’s face as she turned her face into the wind, the salt spray sparkling in her hair.

“You look like you could dive right in,” Zuo remarked as they stood on the deck of his ship. 

“Oh, I could,” she replied breathlessly. “I couldn’t tell you how much I missed the ocean when we were in the Earth kingdom. I couldn’t live that far from it.”

“I guess it’s a good thing that the Fire Nation is made of islands, then,” he said. “You’ll never be too far from the sea, here.”

“No,” she said, blinking at him through damp lashes. “No, I won’t be.”

And the way she said it felt like a promise. 

————— 

When they arrived in Fire Fountain City, Zuko was rushed off immediately by a passel of men in official-looking robes. Katara, left standing alone, looked around with trepidation; she hadn’t been looking forward to returning to this place.

But the memory of the woman in the mountain village spurred her on; if one factory could leave several orphans, how many such children must be here, in a place known for industry?

Katara nearly slipped away alone before remembering that these days, that could cause an international incident. She grabbed one of the messengers by an arm. “Can you get me a guide to the city?” she asked. “And have someone tell Fire Lord Zuko where I’ve gone.”

The messenger bowed deeply. “Yes, Princess,” she said. “Right away.”

Katara looked up at the statue the city was named for, Ozai screaming flames into the blue sky.

“He won’t want to keep that,” she murmured to herself. “It can’t stay.”

“Admiring the statue?” a cheerful voice asked behind her. “Hello, Princess. You requested a guide?”

“Yes,” Katara said, taking in the woman before her: hair carefully done up, perfectly pressed red robes in a style current in the capital, a touch of makeup. She seemed very energetic, as well, but a little… wooden. A little stiff, withdrawn. Her smile didn’t look genuine. 

“The statue was the pride of our city for many years,” the guide said. “Its craftsmanship is unparallelled. The fires never stop burning, you know.” She slanted a glance at Katara. “Some residents are worried that Fire Lord Zuko, bless his name, will wish to remove it.”

Katara, remembering some of Uncle Iroh’s lessons, kept her face smooth and pleasant. The guide seemed to take this as a sign to continue.

“After all the, ah, unpleasantness between the Fire Lord and his father, it would, of course, be understandable to wish the statue gone, but it cannot be denied that Ozai was a great leader,” the woman said. She seemed to sigh over his name. “A great, great leader.”

Katara was getting more and more tense. “I’m sure the Fire Lord will do as he sees best for the city as well as the nation,” she said, as non-committally as possible. “If you could excuse me for a moment.”

The guide bowed again, her smile never leaving her face. “Of course, Princess. Only call for me when you are prepared to leave and I will show all that makes our city so great.”

Katara walked briskly to the building she’d seen Zuko enter, looking for another messenger. The girl she’d spoken to earlier left a room, sighing.

“Excuse me!” Katara called to her. “I asked you for a guide, earlier, didn’t I?”

The girl looked nervous. “Yes, Princess,” she bowed. “Were you unsatisfied? I called for the best and most skilled guide, but I can call for another if you wish.”

Katara didn’t know how to articulate what she wanted. The messenger stood calmly, poised to fetch whatever she asked for. 

“I don’t want to see the monuments and temples,” Katara said finally. “I’m sure they’re wonderful, but I’ll see those with Zuko later. I want to see the… real city. Where people live, where they work. The markets. That sort of thing.”

The messenger looked worried. 

“Is that a problem?” Katara asked, trying to sound reasonable instead of arrogant. The runners seemed to expect those in charge to berate them instead of listen to them, and she was making a concentrated effort to show that the Water Tribe wasn’t like that. She might be the only one that many Fire Nation citizens ever met, and she didn’t wear that responsibility lightly.

“No problem, Princess,” the messenger said carefully. “I just don’t know where to find such a guide. Most available to the Fire Lord are from high-ranking families and will not be familiar with the parts of the city you describe.”

“I’ll take a low-ranking guide!” Katara exclaimed. “I won’t be insulted. I just want to see the ordinary people, not just the fancy and rich. I’m here to help the Fire Lord understand his people and their needs, and that doesn’t mean only the rich people’s needs.”

The messenger’s eyebrows raised slightly at that. She couldn’t have been more than 14, not so much younger than Katara was now. 

“Would you happen to know anyone in this city?” Katara asked, taking a guess at what the messenger’s thoughtful expression could mean. 

“Actually, Princess,” the girl bowed again. “I myself am from this city. Would you accept my services as a guide?”

Katara was secretly delighted. “Yes! That’s perfect. Can you tell the guide outside her services won’t be necessary? I’ll let them know I’m stealing you away.”

The girl smiled, and from the sly tilt of it Katara guessed that she didn't much like the guide either. Katara realized she didn't know the name of the woman outside, or the girl in front of her.

“Oh! What’s your name? If we're to spend more time together, I'd like to know who you are.” Katara could have kicked herself. Was she becoming so used to servants that she no longer asked people their names?

“I am Tanvi, if it please you, Princess.”

“Please, Tanvi, call me Katara. There’s no need for titles all the time.”

Tanvi bowed again, grinning now, before running off. Katara was relieved. Now she could learn when the real problems in the city were. The idea of spending more than five minutes with a woman who praised Ozai to her face was completely disgusting. She knew, though, that many people in the Fire Nation still believed in Ozai and his cause, his propaganda. It would be a long time before that went away.

“I don’t have to like it, though,” she muttered as she went to find the coordinator of the messengers.

————— 

Zuko was overwhelmed by the press of men around him, each of them trying to explain his needs all at once. He allowed them to basically push him into a room, then once the door was closed, he allowed them to see his temper.

“Shut up! All of you! You are all wasting my time like this!”

The men, to a one, snapped their mouth shut. 

Zuko went on. “If you’re all talking at once, I can’t hear any of you, and if any of this was as urgent as you’re claiming, I would have heard about it already! I haven’t even shaken the dirt off my shoes yet! I’m the Fire Lord, I would think you would show more respect!”

Now the men looked cowed. Zuko felt a flash of satisfaction before he realized that he had to be more diplomatic about things. He took a deep breath, shaking his shoulders loose from the men who had gripped him. He bowed, slightly, to the room.

“My apologies, gentlemen. I have spent a long day on the road and I’m tired. Perhaps you could organize your concerns and present them to me in an organized fashion after dinner? I would be,” he breathed deeply again, “happy to work with you on your needs, once I have rested and, uh, recovered from my journey.”

There was a susurrus of agreement in the room, then the men bowed and filed out. Only two remained, and Zuko didn’t think either of them had been shouting.

“Fire Lord,” the one on the left said, bowing deeply. “I am Ishan, and this is Lee Kwan.” The other man bowed identically. “We are your guides and resources for this fair city.”

“Ah,” Zuko said intelligently. “I see. Could one of you, uh, find my rooms and make sure my luggage is there? I’d like to change from my... travel garments.” That sounded suitably Fire Lord-ish, hopefully.

“But of course,” Lee Kwan said. “Immediately.” He left the room, bowing again. Zuko wondered if everyone in this city bowed this much, or if it was just that he was the Fire Lord. He was going to get a backache just watching them.

“If I may, Fire Lord,” said Ishan diffidently. “We have prepared some light refreshments in a parlor for your excellency.”

“Yes,” Zuko said, relieved. No one expected him to talk with his mouth full, and besides, he was starving. “Please, lead the way.”

Following Ishan out of the room, Zuko realized he had no idea where Katara was. “Ah, Ishan?”

“Yes, your excellency?”

“If my advisor Katara could be sent for?”

Ishan bowed again. Was this a constant thing? 

“I believe the Princess Katara has called for a guide to the city,” he said. “However, it would be no problem at all to send for her.”

“No, no,” Zuko said. “I’ll see her at dinner.” At least one of them could be slightly free in this place.

————— 

Katara nearly fell over laughing. “Really? That really happened?”

“My hand to Agni, really,” Zuko, smiling so hard he felt the muscles in his face ache. He hadn’t felt so relaxed in what felt like years. “He backed right down the stairs!”

“Oh! Oh, that’s terrible, I shouldn't be laughing,” Katara said, gasping. “But it’s… I can't believe how much the people in this city bow! It shouldn’t surprise me that he bowed himself down the stairs, really, it’s ridiculous.”

“I know!” Zuko looked up at Katara from his seat on the floor cushions. She flopped across the bed, letting her head dangle off the edge. She considered him, upside-down. 

“You know, Zuko,” she said, calming down. “I’m glad I’m here.”

“Me too,” he said fervently. “I don’t think I could survive this without you.”

“I don’t know if you need me, specifically,” she said, closing her eyes. “But you do need someone with you who doesn’t see you as Fire Lord Zuko all the time. And I know there’s so much more to you than that.”

Zuko couldn’t look away from Katara, the fan of her eyelashes, the fall of her unbound hair. The candlelight gilded her face, and he felt his heart beating too loud in his chest.

“I’m glad it’s you, though,” he rasped. “You make this so much easier for me. I’m glad it’s you, Katara.”

She opened her eyes. They stared at each other for a moment, the sounds of the city at night washing over them.

“Me too, Zuko,” she said quietly. He smiled crookedly at her. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will happen eventually, I promise, it's just resisting me. Let me know if there's anything in particular you want to see from this 'verse. Find me anytime @ lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com


End file.
